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Tag Archives: scenery

Greetings fellows, another quick update for you this week – been chipping away at my new Eru-Kin project and have three new troops to share with you, but first up I want to share a little terrain project that I have been doing on the side. I have been wanting to do a nice bit of jungle terrain for ages now – visions of steaming alien deathworlds, bizarre prehistoric ‘lost worlds’ and psychedelic fantasy jungles are all inspirations here. Two things have motivated me to finally get my bum in gear with this – 1: my Space Frogs need a home planet, and 2: the release of a certain Frostgrave spin-off called Ghost Archipelago, (which looks like a fantastic game!).

When thinking on how best to make this happen, I thought back to Aiden’s superb jungle terrain for the Inquisitor Cynole game at BOYL 2016, and to Paul’s stunning deathworld jungle project over on Sho3box. I’m not about to question such hobby geniuses, (genii?), so I decided to trawl the interwebs for suitable low-cost aquarium plants, and picked out a few brightly coloured examples to base up:

I’ve sprinkled a liberal pinch of skullage around the place – partly to show scale, but also because we all know that skulls are cool! And no… I’m not sure where the rest of the bones are either, (best not to ask I think). I’ll be adding more to this terrain set as time goes by, but I’m quite pleased with how this little side project has started out.

So, on to the latest spawning for my Eru-Kin faction – I have three more basic troops to add to the mix this week. These guys share the same body as the first three that I painted up, but have different weapons & heads so they add a nice bit of interest to the group. I also wanted to try out some new skin tones, so I tested purple, blue & a khaki green:

I’m pretty pleased with how they turned out – doesn’t it all make more sense in a freaky space-jungle?? I think I’ll repeat these skin colours with the final three troops. Here they are by squad – as denoted by the loincloths, just to give you an idea of how it is all coming together, (the General has photobombed a couple of shots too):

Anyway, that’s yer lot for this week! I’m aiming to get the final 3 troopers finished for the next post, plus maybe some more jungle terrain… I am also looking to dip back into Fantasy & build something a wee bit special for my Undead – hopefully ticking off something for Deadcember, and Azazel’s ‘Painting Decemb-uary’ challenge along the way! Catch you all next time 🙂

Hello chaps, great news today – I’ve finished all the trees needed for the Albino Forest stage of The Chapel game this weekend! That’s six woodland bases built & painted in two weeks, with a few conversions chucked in for good measure. Yeah… I won’t lie guys, this was a slog! The painting was actually pretty ok, but the cleaning process was a real pain… I think it is safe to say that it will be a while before I tackle any more Citadel trees!

Here are the six new bases, plus a couple of close-ups on some of the more noteworthy examples:

Those miscast doll’s heads that Mark gave me are perfectly creepy, and will hopefully visually tie in the forest with the Chapel proper.

For those that are interested, the paint job on all of these is Dryad Brown, drybrushed through Baneblade Brown to Ushabti Bone. The rocks get an additional heavy drybrush of Admin Grey followed by a purple wash, while the ground gets an Agrax Earthshade wash, and the wood gets a Camoshade wash. I then do what I can only describe as a ‘wet dry-brush’ on the wood, using a very diluted white wash that I concocted, being careful not to get it on any mossy textured areas, (Citadel texture, added to fill gaps – a handy cheat!). Meanwhile the stone gets an additional light Admin Grey drybrush, has lichen spots added, and then a final wash of Agrax Earthshade. Then it’s just a case of picking out any details like bones & stuff – simples!

Here are the new trees with the three bases & scatter that I already had prepared – all pretty closely matched thank goodness:

I’m sure you’ll agree, that’s quite the forest, and I hope it helps to make the weekend a real visual treat. Now… I just need to finish my warband… I have four wraith-constructs to paint (should be quick), and I might even have time for a Harlequin… we’ll see how it goes! I’ll keep you posted dudes – catch you later in the week 🙂

Greetings, and happy Monday peoples! I have some cool hobby news to share with y’all today – I spent an awesome day with Mark from Heresyofus over the weekend, working on the Albino Forest board for The Chapel project. We had an awesome day, working out the details of the board, building it & talking about the fluff, our hobby philosophies, ideas, and life in general. I also got to see the excellent buildings that Luke, (aka imperial rebel ork), some gorgeous project artwork from Ahmed Alibrahing, and I got to see Mark’s awesome warband and his denizens of the Chapel first hand. I’ve always loved Mark’s work & painting style, but getting to see his minis first hand was a real treat. Another highlight was seeing the progress on the Chapel board… I’m not going to say any more for fear of spoilers, but trust me – the pictures really don’t do Mark’s work justice… suffice to say that those that answer the call are in for a treat! Anyway, with regards to the forest board, once we had finished up and stuff was mostly dry, we just had to pose a few models for the obligatory photo shoot. Hopefully these hastily snapped pics will give you guys an idea of how the Albino Forest is going to look:

One half textured, the other drybrushed & shaded

Gives you an idea of the look – diseased and grim!

Some trees added

Mark’s Wych Cult advances through the trees

The big hitters

Corpse cart (yum!!)

Some of IRO’s scenery added

A spooky manifestation

My Eldar cautiously explore the Albino Forest

And meet a rakish Ostium Guide

A rare meeting of Guides

Mark’s cult as they stand today

So there we go – pretty damn cool, right? But as cool as all that was, the best bit was meeting Mark face to face – it is always good to meet a likeminded hobby buddy, and working together on a big build/paint is brilliant, but getting to put a face to the name is priceless. It helps when that face belongs to an awesome bloke, who just happens to be a creative power house, and who has a lovely family to boot. So, Mark, thanks for an awesome day mate – it was great to meet you all, and thank you for making me feel so welcome! Looking forward to repeating the experience, and you are welcome to come visit any time.

Oh, and speaking of family – big shout out to my Brother-in-Lead Ross, who became a Dad for the first time over the weekend. Congrats to you & Kel dude – wee man is utterly lush, and is surely your best mini yet mate 🙂

Hi guys, my delve into the world of The Chapel continues with more twisted trees to join the three test pieces that I did a few weeks back. My pal Ross donated those test pieces assembled and primed, and having now built my own, my gratitude to him has doubled! They are a pain to do – wonky bits, poor fitting in places, fiddly mold lines all over the place… but, they are still pretty good fun 🙂

Anyway, I picked up two sets and decided pretty much straight away that I wanted to convert a few for a bit variety. I ended up doing one normal tree, one extra tall tree and one stump per pack, (the leftovers from the stump going on top of a tree to make a tall one). The hollow stumps had a cup moulded and sculpted inside, and I added a load of skulls and gore – the suggestion being that this is where debased forest folk pledge their sacrifices to the Albino Wytches. The skulls came from a number of kits and there is actually quite a range of sizes involved, which gives the rather macabre impression that men, women and children are all potential sacrifices.

In terms of painting, I tried to mirror my test pieces but I couldn’t remember exactly how I did them, so there is a bit of guesswork involved. That said, they are pretty close. I also tried out some cheap brown acrylic paint I spotted in WH Smiths for the base coat – it’s almost the same colour as Dryad Bark, (if a little shiny), but it worked well once all the drybrushing & washes were finished. Here’s a few pics:

I have plans to use the many leaves that come with the kit to make some low shrub-type scatter terrain – the bark will be white again, and I thought a dark red for the leaves – I know it’s a bit of a Game of Thrones cliché, but it will look rather good I think. I’m going to buy more of these sets, but I’m struggling to think of other interesting ways to convert them… If anyone has any ideas, requests or suggestions, please add a comment below!!

Finally, I have made some progress on my not-exarch based on some of the feedback I got… I think I need to bulk up the cloak around the shoulders, and the fur needs to be a bit more wild looking, but he’s moving in the right direction I think – savage but not evil, strong but not bulky… Thoughts?

Hello chaps, just look at what came through the letter box the other day:

Now that is exciting enough by itself, but Mark of heresyofus.com was generous enough to drop a few yummy Black Earth goodies into the box too! (Thanks Mark!)

Speaking of generosity, by brother-in-lead Ross ‘twigged’ my recent forest/woodland obsession, and gifted me an unwanted Citadel woodland set over the weekend – all built and undercoated, ready to rock! (Thanks Ross!). I’ve been dabbing away at it on and off these last few days:

I love how this came out – I specifically wanted this to match my test dryad thingy, and I think that I managed to do that – she blends in nicely, don’t you think? This is really starting to build up my vision of the Albino Forest, and I’m looking forward to chopping and changing a few more of these kits to develop this further. I’m still not sure whether to stick some leaves & tufts on the base or not, as per the test bases I did recently… I reckon it would look awesome, but I’m worried that it’ll be overly fragile on a gaming piece. I’ll have a think on that, but I suspect that practicality may be taking a back seat on this one 😉

Anyway, that’s all for now – slowly finishing up my Ostium Guides and then on to the warband proper, with more woods & forest baddies to build and paint on the side!

Hi guys, I’ve put together a quick post to show how I go about building a boat out of coffee stirrers… A few of you were asking, so have at it – lots of pics, and not much words 🙂

Soak ’em

Brace ’em

Add boiling water & leave overnight, then pour the water away and leave the stirrers for a day to dry while braced in position

Nice bend to them, still slightly damp

Very flexible

Braces glued on to form the sides

Put them ‘back to back’ (braces out!)

Cut the shape of the prow through both sides…

so that it matches…

Repeat at the other end

switch the sides around and glue prow and stern

Glue in some bracing – top…

and bottom… Let it all dry for a day or two

Add planking (I planked the bottom on this one to make a rowing boat, but my first one had the planking on top to make a deck… your choice!)

Add some bits…

and some bobs!

There we go, I hope that makes the process a bit clearer. Obviously, this is just a very quick scenery project – the boats are not especially to scale, and aren’t highly detailed. This is a quick, low cost solution to address a particular need within a Frostgrave scenario, but this approach should also work for a range of games from fantasy, historical, pirates, whatever! I daresay that with more time, effort and skill, you could really create something spectacular… (Mikko, I’m lookin’ at you bud!)